Posts Tagged ‘Ars Sublitor’

Also known as Paulo Tenorista and Magister Dominus Paulas Abbas de Florentia (as he’s called in the Squarcialupi Codex.)

Musically, Paolo da Firenza was conservative and progressive at the same time. He borrowed and combined musical practices from the past and the innovations of his own times, both Italian (old school) and French (new school). He had a distinctively rich and varied musical style. More music from ars nova period survives from Paolo than any other composer except Francesco Landini (c1325-1397), with whom he was friends.

It’s not known if Paulo was born in Florence, but he did live most of his life there, so it’s probable. His father’s name is thought to have been Marco and his family was poor. Paolo is thought to have had three brothers, but their names and what became of them isn’t known.

Paolo became a Benedictine monk around 1380 and his portrait in the Squarcialupi Codex shows him in a suitable black cassock. In 1401, he took the abbot position at Saint Martin al Pino and later became the rector of Orbetello, where he stayed until 1427. In around 1410, he supervised the compilation of the Squarcialupi Codex.

As abbot, he must have been a public figure, because in 1404, Paolo witnessed the signing of a document written at the cardinal’s house in Rome. The only other known date from his life comes from his madrigal Godi, Firenze, which celebrates the victory of Florence over Pisa in 1406.

Much of Paolo’s work is secular and all is vocal, although some of the attributions on Paolo’s ballate are erased in the source. All of his known output is for two or three voices, and through sources or stylistic elements, it’s all datable prior to 1410. Four of his vocal duets are credited to “Don Paolo,” and “P.A.” Is the composer of another 13 pieces.

He wrote three types of songs: 13 madrigals, more than 40 ballate, and two liturgical pieces. The three types of songs represent a sort of chronological journey. Paolo began with the traditional two-voice ballata but soon picked up the French fashion of three voices.

His use of the madrigal form—a third of his 30 surviving secular pieces are madrigals—is unusual at this time, when other forms had largely superseded it. His madrigals reveal a mixture of progressive and conservative elements, some with French influence (more on that in a minute). His two liturgical pieces combine an upper melodic line in the Italian manner with a cantus firmus. He also wrote at least one musical treatise.

His vocal duets use traditional forms and styles. One unusual feature is the provision of open and closed endings for the ritornelli of six madrigals; in one of these, the text doesn’t require repetition of the music (a ritornelli returns both in melody and text—the word means “return”). The same madrigal has open (doesn’t resolve to a satisfying ending) and closed endings (does resolve) in the first musical section (there’s an A and a B section). Earlier composers didn’t use these kinds of endings, although Lorenzo da Firenze and Jacopo da Bologna (fl 1340-c1386) used them in one piece each. It’s the number of times Paolo used these endings that’s unusual. The departure from common practice is less important, though, than the variety of rhythmic and melodic figures.

Paolo went beyond the two-part madrigal only once, in the three-voice Godi, Firenze when Florence defeated Pisa in a small war (remember, Italy was a collection of small city-states, much like Germany was at the time, each with their own rulers and armies). Perhaps the celebration that inspired him also encouraged him to leave his fuddy duddy ways behind.

Where his madrigals are conservative, his ballata are innovative, and he wrote more in the new style of three voices than for two. He was the first composer to do that in the case of the ballata. Of the 26 pieces concretely attributed to Paolo, only six are in two voices. Ten have the French disposition of solo cantus (chant-based melody line) with instrumental tenor and contratenor (higher voices sung against the chant melody), and ten have the hybrid form of vocal duet with instrumental contratenor. Three of these last also exist as vocal duets without a contratenor, but the three voice versions are probably the original.

Of his sacred music, the Benedicamus Domino is for two voices, and Gaudeamus omnes in Domino is for three voices.

With Landini and Andrea da Firenze (d. 1415), Paolo’s output marks the end of Florence’s dominance over Italian musical styles as musicians and their patrons moved to Milan, Venice, and Padua, and eventually on to Rome. Even Paolo spent the end of his life away from Florence.

Paolo’s ballate are the most modern of his works, being mostly for three voices, and all are lyrical, melodic and use some of the more extreme rhythmic intricacies of the ars subtilior school. Landini’s influence, which would have predominated Florence in the late 14th century, is evident in both the madrigals and the ballate.

Paolo was one of the supervisors who produced the musical anthology called the Squarcialupi Codex (blog post to come). Despite this, the 32 pages reserved for his works, with his portrait (in the black cassock of the Benedictine monk) on the first page and his name at the top of the rest, contain nothing but empty staves. Some think his music wasn’t yet available, although other sources suggest that he was simply away from Florence, attending to the needs of Cardinal Acciaiuoli (d. 1409) at the deadline.

Paolo’s unique style is evident in the sound of the music and in the notation that he used. He used Italian notation and its varied note shapes, mixed with notation of the French principles of mannered notation that introduced new (and needlessly) complex ways of expressing rhythmic patterns. His manuscripts combine Italian and French notation and show the influence of the Avignon mannerist school of ars subtilior in their rhythms, which are complex and intricate.

Using music notation was considered progressive in the 14th century, especially in Italy, and the proportional survival of Paolo’s secular to sacred music may be representative of a trend to document all music, not just sacred.

A resurgence of interest in the Renaissance in the 1970s translated Paolo’s work into modern notation, so it’s a lot easier for us to perform now.

His date of birth is estimated based on information in his will, written within a day or so of his death. When he resigned as abbot in 1433, he was approximately 78 years old. He died in Florence at the age of 81.

Sources:

“Companion to Medieval and Renaissance Music,” edited by Tess Knighton and David Fallows. University of California Press, Berkeley, 1997.

“A Dictionary of Early Music; From the Troubadours to Monteverdi,” by Jerome & Elizabeth Roche. Oxford University Press, New York, 1981.

Between 1414 and 1418, the Catholic Church held a council at Konstanz (now in southwestern Germany right on the Swiss border). This council ended the papal schism and elected Pope Martin V (1369-1461), condemned and executed Jan Hus (1369-1415, considered the first church reformer), and ruled on wars, the rights of pagans, and national sovereignty. But the most important thing it did, as far as I’m concerned, is that it moved the center of musical innovation from diverse parts (Flanders, Paris, Burgundy, and Avignon), to Rome.

Music was a part of the event, with Oswald von Wolkenstein (c1376-1445, biography to come) accompanying Emperor Sigismund (1368-1437, King of Hungary, Croatia, Bohemia, Italy, and Germany, Holy Roman Emperor, and the last Emperor of the House of Luxemburg) and the English delegation bringing its choristers to be admired in Köln along the way to Konstanz.

But even before that, a few northern musicians were making their way to Italy. One of the first northerners to make a career in Italy was Johannes Ciconia. His welcome there marked a change in attitude toward foreigners and the beginning of a true renaissance in music and art. And, of course, he brought the northern aesthetic with him, changing Italian music forever.

Ciconia’s work marks a stylistic change from soloistic polyphony (multiple melodic lines rather than the chord-based harmony that came later) to polyphony for choruses. This meant that complex and rhythmically animated melodic lines from the late Medieval period had to become smoother and more readily singable, the sound that we recognize as Renaissance music today.

He composed in all the popular genres of the time, and, like his contemporary Leonel Power (c1370-1445, biography to come), and superstar Guillaume Dufay (c1400-1474), he represents the musical span from the Franco-Flemish Renaissance to the Italian Renaissance.

Three men with the name Johannes Ciconia lived in Liege in the 14th century, and it’s probable that our Johannes’ father was the eldest, born in 1335. That Johannes Ciconia was a priest and is thought to have had a child with a local noblewoman. She named him Johannes Ciconia like his papa and that’s probably the boy we’re interested in. (I found no details about the third person.)

The elder Johannes was in service in Avignon in 1350, and accompanied Cardinal Albornoz (1310-1367) on an Italian campaign between 1358 and 1367. He returned to Flanders and was assigned to Liege in 1372, where he held a prebend (a stipend from the church) and was a priest at St. John the Evangelist. He stayed there until 1401. It isn’t known when he died, but 1401 makes sense, considering his age.

Johannes junior was born in Liege in about 1373 and trained there and in Flanders. A document in Liege in 1385 refers to a choirboy called Johannes Ciconia who became a cleric, but it’s uncertain whether or not he became a priest like his father.

In 1391, there are records of young Ciconia serving Pope Boniface IX (c1350-1404), but it’s not known in what capacity. He served Cardinal D’Alençon in Rome in the 1390s as clericus capella (the cleric of the choir), an important post, and usually one occupied by promising young musicians. Ciconia then went into the service of Giangaleazzo Visconti (1351-1402) at his court in Pavia in the late 1390s. Visconti was busy creating a dynasty and came to rule nearly all of Italy, which didn’t hurt Ciconia’s visibility any.

Big patrons explain some of Ciconia’s stylistic choices. While he was in Padua, he developed close connections with the politically powerful Carrara family and became a canon there. He later received commissions from Venice (which conquered Padua in1406) and he dedicated a madrigal to the Lord of Lucca (probably Paulo Guinigi, 1400-1430) in Tuscany.

Comfortably settled in Padua by 1398, he became chaplain at the cathedral in 1401 and cantor by 1403, a post he held until his death in 1412. In the years following his appointment at the cathedral, Ciconia was granted benefices (both payment and a retainer for future services) at nearby churches, including at St. Biagio di Roncalea Church. Only a handful of his works date to this period.

Ciconia wrote three theoretical treatises, although some sources say it was only two. I only found two titles, Nova Musica and De Proportionibus but that doesn’t mean there isn’t a third book. More sources said three treatises than two.

Although much of his music is lost, there is still plenty that remains for us to marvel at. He wrote 11 Mass sections, 11 motets, and 20 secular pieces with texts in both French and Italian. His sacred music included motets (a religious version of the madrigal using Biblical passages) and Mass movements (mostly Glorias or Credos). His secular music included French virelais (a specific song pattern, often instrumental), Italian ballata (a danceable song), and Italian-styled madrigals (unaccompanied part songs). Of his 11 motets, four are isorhythmic (where a rhythmic phrase or pattern is repeated throughout in one voice or several) but others are closer to Italian songs and were more rambunctious in nature. Most were written to celebrate important events or as eulogies.

Ciconia claimed that his greatest inspiration was Guillaume Machaut (1300-1377) a fellow Franco-Flemish composer. Ciconia’s three-part canon, Le ray au solely, is a typical exercise of northern ingenuity in fond imitation and development from Machaut’s work. And the music went in the other direction too; Franco-Flemish Guillaume Dufay (c1400-1474) wrote motets that imitate Ciconia’s.

Within individual pieces, musical imitation was the new style, and Ciconia led the way. Imitation means that a particular melody was produced in one voice and then repeated, slightly changed (perhaps on different notes, perhaps the same notes with a different rhythm, and rarely, repeated identically) in other voices. Occasionally, the line was passed from voice to voice, so that to the listener, the phrase is always heard. Imitation soon became a central feature in Renaissance music.

Practically all of Ciconia’s secular works are settings of Italian poems. He particularly cultivated the ballata in two or three parts, with plenty of coloratura (wiggly and flexible soprano lines) on the upper parts. When the madrigal had a resurgence of popularity at the beginning of the 15th century, Ciconia was quick to participate.

Ciconia’s motets can practically all be dated by the persons and events to which they refer during the first decade of the 15th century. Two are for voices only, both singing the same Latin text; these are stylistically indistinguishable from madrigals. Two others are monotextual, with two equal voices singing with free or canonic imitation over an instrumental tenor. The rest have two or three different texts all sung simultaneously, as in the older style.

Ciconia combined elements of French Ars Nova (a French style that flourished in France and the Burgundian Low countries in the early 14th century) with Italian 14th century style. His synthesis would strongly influence other early 15th century composers.

His Italian songs, including four madrigals and at least seven ballate, show aspects of the French style that was fashionable then in northern Italy, probably made fashionable by Ciconia himself. Chansons, of which only two of his virelais and a canon survive, exploit the rhythmic complexities of the Ars Subtilior (an intricate style from Avignon in the 14th and early 15th centuries).

Ciconia wrote a good many of his works for wealthy patrons, like Francesco Zabarella (1360-1417), who was a good friend and mentor. One of his laments, Con Lagrime bagnadome, was written upon the death of Francesco of Carrara, referring to Francesco il Nuovo (the new) sometime after 1406.

It’s possible that the last years of his life were quite comfortable and he was possibly even wealthy.

Just for fun, Ciconia translates as a stork, a long-legged bird. Perhaps this family was tall?

Sources:

“A History of Western Music,” by J. Peter Burkholder, Donald Jay Grout, and Claude Palisca. W.W. Norton and Company, New York, 2010.